This invention relates to apparatus for making tufted products such as carpet or the like, and more particularly relates to apparatus particularly useful for producing cut pile patterned carpets.
Prior art apparatus for producing tufted carpet is known to the art. One such process of the art, known as "fusion bonding", calls for bonding yarn tufts between two face-to-face sheets of backing material. The yarn is then split into two parts midway between the two backing sheets, producing two separate mirror-image carpets. Other prior art techniques for making tufted carpet require individual tuft gripping members for holding each cut tuft of carpet yarn. An example is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,878,011 to Currell et al. That carpet tufting apparatus is complex in design and operation, and is not suited to manufacture patterned tufted carpets.
Still other apparatus of the prior art is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,937,643 to Spanel, wherein individual yarns are first secured to a carpet backing before cutting. The secured yarns are then cut from the yarn supply to create individual tufts, after which the process is repeated. This kind of tufting machine also is not suited to producing patterned tufted carpets.